It’s been less than a year since Kevin McCarthy’s brutally painful, borderline humiliating speakership coronation, and a mere three weeks since he was ousted, and yet the former speaker only now seems to be charting out his new reality. Until Mike Johnson’s ascent to his former throne, McCarthy seemed to be holding on—dwelling in his old office, keeping the speaker’s Twitter handle, and not-so-slyly angling for a powerful, but soft landing for himself under the Dome.

As I noted last week, McCarthy refused to go quietly into the night like Boehner or Ryan. Instead, he loomed even larger at conference meetings, won votes on secret ballots, and put his finger on the scale to nuke the ambitions of his enemy Majority Leader Steve Scalise in favor of Jim Jordan, who would need his fundraising infrastructure, political skill and vortex of relationships. (McCarthy raised $80 million last cycle working the billionaire circuit; Jordan raised $14 million in small-dollar donations off his Fox News hits.)